Reinstall Windows 95

Note:

 First off, for your information here, if windows 98 is installed on pc, windows 95 will not install to hard drive until its been partitioned and formated to remove win 98. As in most situations like this, windows tries to protect us by not allowing you to down grade. Usually when trying to boot from win95 floppy, the pc will say no with a message like: Incorrect operating system, or similar. You need a win98 bootdisk or even a proper version(vers. 6 or 7 would work) of a dos boot disk to boot into dos and use fdisk and format.exe tools to prepare hard drive for win 95 installation. If there is a way around that basic maintenance, I have never seen it in person. Just a fact of life, down grades are not considered as viable options by windows, especially back then.

 

I sat down here and laid out the way we did what you need done back when win95 was the only show in town and we had no choice in using it, unless we went back to win 3.1 or preferred staying in the dark with a version of DOS. They actually lined up around the block the day before win95 debuted and huddled in the cold all night for their chance at one of the first copies. OMG!

 

Once I had it all down and formated nicely, I previewed the post and realized how much work we used to do and how outdated win95 has become. Forget 95, Windows 98 is a generation better in everyway but size. You could get win95 installed at a size of around 65 or 70 megs. 98 was pushing 250 megs plus on that first boot to its desktop.

 

Anyways, that's your best and easiest bet for getting that pc up and running for the kids as well as having an OS that they could actually use for something. What I mean by the use is finding software that will run on 95 without extra special help everytime is gonna be tough now. Also, too many of win95 chores were done by the user, we just didn't mind, as it was still more user friendly than win 3.1 or dos were, work wise anyways. Also,support by microsoft has been gone for at least 6 or 7 years, maybe more. It's gone for 98 as well, but you will find more help online for 98 if you need it, people will have forgotten how to help with 95 by now, so frustration factor for grandpa will be high.

 

Win98 is your best bet here, and the second edition in particular. It will even allow you a USB pci card (15.00 at Walmart), allowing the kids to use that interface for their periphials and not have to be rebooting constantly or figuring out which drivers to use or how.

 

Anyways, if you have an address, p.o.box would be alright., I have Win98 second edition and the proper paperwork, i.e. manual with cd install number on front cover and I would be happy to donate it to that project for the kids. Just let me know and its yours. It's doing nothing here but taking us space in my systems cd binder and it's time I let go.